•You will hear a program about business. •For each question (23-30), mark one letter (A, B or C) for the correct answer. •

Woman: Good evening. They used to say "As goes General Motors, so goes the nation". Today is "As goes IBM, so goes the market". It’s a rough one on Wall Street, down more than 200 points for much of the day. When it was over, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 94 points to close at 10,297. IBM was off 21 points, after the computer giant warned its earnings would be lower than expected for several quarters to come. It seems that the business, "fixing computers for the year 2000" is drying up. And companies and consumers are waiting for the millennium to pass before they spend any more money on technology. Here is our reporter Caroline Walter.
Man: It was a nasty joke for investors today who had dismissed Y2K as much ado about nothing. Shares of IBM plunged almost 20 per cent on unexpected news that the drop of the Y2K spending is having a big impact on big blue. The problem is businesses that paid IBM and other technology companies tens of billions of dollars last year to make sure their computer systems were ready for the year 2000 have now stopped spending, at least until sometime next year.
Woman: Many corporations say that they’ve bought their computers. They’ve switched their software, it’s Y2K compliant. And they just don’t want to touch that installation, they don’t want to risk something going wrong after they worked so hard to make sure that everything is going to work.
Man: IBM is the most prominent casualty of the technology spending freeze, but others are suffering as well. On Monday shares of Lexmark International, a computer printing company, dropped 30 per cent. Purchases of new printers have been postponed until after the new millennium. Shares of Computer Horizons, which installs business software, have fallen more than 75 percent. Last year the company had its best year ever. What worries Wall Street now is how many other companies who think their businesses are fine will find their earnings decimated by the drop of Y2K spending. A company as big as IBM could underestimate the risk. others could also be fooled.